


Christmas Present

by akire_yta



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: F/M, Spycraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:24:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8971720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: For the Secret Santa 2016 - My sesa was for @changeinenthalpy, who has asked for: “Incarnation: TAG, TOS. Lady Penelope + Christmas market (maybe undercover?).





	

The sounds of the carousel rang out over the crowd.  

Penny smiled nostalgically even as she burrowed more deeply into her thick, soft scarf.  When she was a little girl, they’d come to the city every year, and as a reward for good behaviour during the day, they’d finish at the markets so Penny could ride the carousel.  She loved the horse best, for all that she wasn’t much of a rider of the real thing.

She wasn’t riding the carousel tonight; now she had a different objective.

Penny mingled with the crowd, casually looking into the stalls, made up to look like chalets, a row of warm lights in the gathering night.  Three stalls ahead, her mark had paused to finger a scarf draped over a rail.  Penny moved with the crowd, watching without staring as her target spoke briefly to the stall holder, laughing easily at a shared joke even as he disengaged and moved on.

He wasn’t looking for a tail, and the pulse of the crowd as they moved around the market made it easy to hide.  He paused again, right in a puddle of light thrown by a lamp, and Penny took the opportunity to snap a photograph to confirm her target.

This really was rather too easy.

Confirmation came in the form of a gentle vibration of her compact moments later.  Penny flipped through the asset summary, under the guise of checking a shopping list– low level flunky, but tied to the Hood and his operations.  As such, he might present a way in, and would almost certainly have useful intelligence.  Orders were unchanged; capture without arousing suspicion, and deliver the package.

“Ho, ho, ho indeed,” Penny murmured to herself as she snapped her compact shut.

He seemed to have no set direction, his wanderings almost taking on the aspect of stalling, and Penny wondered whether this was a dead drop, or even better, a rendezvous.  Two for the price of one would merit an agent of her caliber being out on this frigid night.  But for now, she kept pace with the man as he stopped at nearly every stall.

He paused again, and Penny turned to find her movement had brought her level with a calligrapher, his small display littered with pens and papers and examples of his art.  Penny picked up a pen, nodding appreciatively at the solidity and balance of the carefully crafted instrument.

Virgil would love something like this, a fitting addition to his artists’ collection.

Penny appreciated efficiency, and if her mark noticed a pretty blonde in a pink coat, a bag full of gaily wrapped parcels would allay suspicion.  That she could finish off some of her more tricky Christmas shopping was just a bonus.

Virgil’s gift tucked securely away, Penny drifted across the concourse, keeping an eye on her mark in the reflection of a dressmaker’s mirror.  When he moved, Penny stepped back into the flow of the crowd.

A ridiculous hat for Alan, an antique book of old star charts for John, and a bottle of fine boutique whiskey for Scott later, and Penny was starting to wish for a heist, or an assassination attempt, or anything to liven up the evening.  Her feet were aching, and her bag’s strap was digging into her shoulder slightly with the weight of her gifts.

Also, there was Gordon, the impossible giftee as far as she was concerned. 

Penny lifted up a snow globe, filled incongruously with little tropical fish, and it was only due to years of rigorous training and practice that she didn’t gasp.

Her mark’s face, distorted by the curve, reflected back at her in the glass. “Excuse me, miss?” he asked.

Penny found a suitable neutral character in her mental repertoire and settled her features into the appropriate expression.  “Hmm?  Yes?”

He nodded at the bottle poking out of her bag.  “Can I ask where you got that?  That’d make a perfect boss gift.”  He smiled at her, easily charming, and Penny let her character be flattered.

“Oh, they’re just over there,” she said, putting back the globe and turned, posing her body language to subtly invite the mark to follow her.

“Whiskey for the boss?  Good boss or bucking for a promotion?” she twittered as they walked together through the crowds.  There were fewer people around now, the cold and dark slowly thinning the groups.  Her orders did not cover engagement, but Penny knew a good agent sometimes had to improvise.

This felt like tap-dancing on thin ice, and she had to work to keep her pleased expression off her face.

The mark chuckled, shrugging awkwardly.  “He’s…something.  Figure it couldn’t do no harm, especially after…”

Penny had to bite the inside of her lip.  “Hmm?” she asked, open but not demanding.  Her persona wouldn’t be too excited to pry into a stranger’s private life.

“I…lost something.  A package, I was meant to deliver it tonight.  Figure a bottle of whiskey might soften the blow.”

Penny wanted to dance a jig; it was a rendezvous, and with someone high in the organisation.  Dare she hope it might be the Hood himself?  But her window of opportunity was closing here.  “That’s an excellent idea,” she praised warmly, laying it on as thick as she dared with the fluttering eyelashes and the micro-expressions of interest. “I should get a second bottle for my boss, now that I think about it.”  In her head, she called up her middle-school headmistress and re-cast her in the role of boss for her current persona.  “She’s a terror, but this may sweeten her up when I ask for that raise in the new year.”

The chatter stayed apparently light as they approached the brightly-lit stall and its rows of bottles, nestled in straw-lined wooden crates.

Penny had the rough shape of an idea for how to capitalize on her good fortune as the mark chattered away, dropping hints like breadcrumbs.  But she couldn’t quite seem to pull out of her mark specific-enough details on who and when and where to call in backup.

She needed more.

“Can you believe it’s almost Christmas,” she began, scanning the sentence ahead in her mind, choosing her words with precision and care. NLP was a delicate art.  “The time has just flown by, I can’t believe how soon I’ll be meeting all my friends, we need to arrange a rendezvous we all can make, and share it so we know we’re not going to be late.”  Penny lifted a bottle, barely daring to look.  Her trainers would have been aghast at how thickly she was laying it on, but Penny was on a mission here, and she could sense that her window of opportunity had nearly closed.

The dark glass just barely let her catch in its reflection her mark’s face, a slight frown as Penny’s carefully chosen keywords sank into his subconsciousness.

“Yeah, uh, right.  I should be off.”  He nodded at the stallholder, waving a small bottle and handing over cash.  Penny blinked, not letting her smile fall, and blindly handed over her payment for the bottle in her own hands.

“Hopefully your boss enjoys that,” she said, falling back into step, making it appear as if they were just, by random happenstance, going in the same direction.

“Yeah. Uh, thanks miss, I appreciate your help.  But I should be off.”

Penny licked her lips.  “I don’t suppose…”  Her persona would do this, even if it made Penny’s own toes curl in distaste.  “I’d love to hear how it went, if you give me your number…?”

She could see him thinking about it. “Sorry, miss,” he said, sounding truly regretful.  “Gotta dash.  Lovely to meet you.”  Then he was gone, into the crowds heading towards the smell of the food trucks near the carousel.

“Bugger,” Penny cursed.  So close. Dropping her new purchase in next to the other presents, she set off after him.  It would be harder, now she was no longer just an anonymous face in the crowd.  But the possibility of snapping up not only her mark but his boss made her want to press her luck.

The food trucks were arranged in a ring, the carousel like a jewel at the apex of the curve.  Beyond that, the dark ribbon of the river disappeared into the night.

If he went that way, she’d never catch him.

She turned and scanned the food trucks, looking between the gaps.  A flash of movement caught her eye, and she watched as her mark sidled up between two trucks, rapping on the door of the ice cream van that was doing poor trade on this wintery night.

Penny’s eyes narrowed as his knock was answered.  Even at this distance, and with one figure obscured by the door, Penny could tell they were having an argument.  Slipping into the crowd, she made her approach.

The doughnut van was doing a busy trade, and Penny threaded through the line with a smile and wink, leaving barely a ripple in her wake.  Sliding around the back, surrounded by the smell of warm cinnamon and sugar, she crept as close as she dared.

The carousel’s bells were loud, but she could make out words. “…lost the package.. won’t be pleased…we had our orders to move tonight… stay there…I’ll make the call…”

Penny’s eyes narrowed as she took in the power lines connecting all the vans to the grid.  The doughnut truck, even with its deep fryers, had one cable, as thick as two of her fingers, snaking out from the truck, running between her feet to join the switchboard.

The icecream truck had six such cables.  That meant that whatever was in there was drawing a lot of power.  Something was up, something big.

The happy yells of children on the carousel, the murmur of a thousand different conversations, the more-distant call of the hawkers in their stalls filled her ears.  Penny frowned, weighing up her options.  There were too many civilians around to wait and see, she had to get in that truck and stop them before they did whatever they were planning.

Her mission plan did not include capture of multiple targets, but Penny always enjoyed the challenge of improvising.  Her fingers wrapped around her new bottle of whiskey, feeling the weight and heft of the bottle.

This would do nicely.

Stepping silently, Penny picked her way over the cables and, without breaking stride, swung hard.

The bottle connected to the back of his skull with an empty _thwok_ but didn’t shatter.  Penny raised an eyebrow, impressed, even as her original mark crumpled gracelessly at her feet.  Penny shook out her wrist, then knocked on the door.

“I said wait…” Penny waited until her new target’s head was halfway through the door, then slammed it.  The thin metal hatch bent alarmingly, and her target groaned, so Penny brought her bottle up with a proper cricketers underarm swing.

She had to kick his unconscious form back into the trailer.  There was no way she could get the other man, still unconscious on the ground, up the narrow set of steps, so she satisfied herself with rolling him underneath so he was hidden in the shadow of the wheels.

Satisfied she hadn’t been seen, Penny closed the door and set her bottle on the counter.

The doughnut area was a small hatch, with a tiny, domestic style doughnut maker setup next to it.  “No wonder you don’t have any customers,” she told the unconscious figure on the floor.

The rest of the small trailer was filled with surveillance equipment, phone scanners and RFID scoops.  Penny sat at the laptop open on the bench, and studied the readouts for a while.  “You’re stealing identities,” she murmured, impressed despite herself.  “Of course.  Every time someone takes a picture or makes a call, you scoop it up and add it to your databases.  A new face and a new voice for your disguises.”  She was impressed despite herself.

There was one greyed-out field in the sea of readouts.  “Credit card…oh, doing a bit of phishing as well, I see.”  She glanced over the mess of electronics.  “That’s what the parcel was, a credit card reader so you could collect some funds as well.”  It was a small scheme that stank of desperation.  “Is The Hood hard up for cash, hmm?” she asked the figure on the floor.

He groaned, and Penny rested one immaculate heel on the back of his neck as she flipped open her comm and called the cavalry.  

 * * *

The last night of the markets was Christmas Eve, and the crowds were thick with people out for the evening and those desperate for last minute gifts.  Penny’s own gifts were tucked up under her tree, well-wrapped and ready for tomorrow morning, when she’d play the hostess, the manor once again full of voices and laughter and happiness.

Tonight, though, was for them.

Gordon leaned into her, her arm tucked up in his, his scarf piled high around his neck.  “What was it you wanted to show me?” he asked.

Penny just tugged him along through the crowds.  “This.”

Before them, the carousel swung and turned in all its antique glory.  “My mother and I used to come every year.  I…I stopped, after she passed.  It seemed wrong to ride alone.”

She smiled at Gordon and willed him to understand.

His smile was slow, a dawning of comprehension that made him glow.  “Well, in that case,” he said, dropping into a courtly bow.  “A lady should always ride in company, so may I have the honour of being your escort?”

Penny ducked her head to hide her grin as Gordon bought two tickets from the attendant, waving him away as he came to help them onto the horses.  Gordon’s gloved hand was steady as he helped her up himself, waiting for her to settle in the hard harness before he leaped up with an easy swing onto the horse next to her.  “Giddyup, your ladyship.”

Penny felt the old mechanism wind up and their horses started their ride once more around the ring. “Merry Christmas, Gordon.”

He winked back.  “Merry Christmas, Penny.” He patted his horse.  “Now, first one back to the start is the winner.”

Penny tossed her hair back and laughed, open and honest and free.


End file.
